


The Hours Before Dawn

by Miri1984



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Addiction, Angst, Gen, IDK WHAT IS ANGST, IT'S MIRI PROJECTS ON A CHARACTER HOURS AGAIN, Introspection, damascus musings, i guess?, kind of sort of - Freeform, they stop working properly, wilde has been using restoration potions for weeks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:46:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22750456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miri1984/pseuds/Miri1984
Summary: Oscar Wilde has had to use restoration potions to function for far too long.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 78





	The Hours Before Dawn

He was glad they were all so tired. It meant they were not looking at him when he turned from them, moving to set his bedroll down a ways from the fire. The air around them was full of the popping and cooling sounds of the baked glass of the mountaintop, the air above it hazy and hot, despite the coldness of the desert wind. He’d never been fond of sleeping in the outdoors, although he’d done it often enough in his time, not that the LOLOMG would believe him if he told them about sleeping rough.

They’d leap to conclusions, no doubt, about what he meant by the word.

They wouldn’t be entirely wrong.

He sat, glancing over to where Grizzop sat, on watch. He wasn’t paying him any obvious attention but he didn’t reach for the potion of restoration at his belt, not yet, instead lying down and facing away from him so he couldn’t see that he was not closing his eyes.

He couldn’t afford to lose face in front of them. Not now. Not when things were on such a knife’s edge, when it was possible they were the only people he could trust. He wrapped his arms around his middle to hide the shaking of his hands, forced his body to relax into the semblance of sleep. A few hours and it would be his watch, and he’d be able to take the potion.

_ They’ll stop working eventually,  _ the cleric of Demeter had told him, her soft voice full of compassion as he handed over gold, buying their entire stock.

“They’ll last long enough,” he’d said, raggedly, back when he’d still held out hope for that, back when he’d still willingly laid down to sleep each night to make the attempt, back before he’d screamed himself so hoarse he couldn’t cast for an entire day.

The money was nothing. He was bankrolled by the meritocrats, or at least he had been, and old habits of the road stayed with him, which meant he had money stashed everywhere he’d worked in the past ten years. But even they would run out some day, and the temples would get suspicious, the more of them he bought, so he portioned them out carefully. First, one every two days, then one every three.

When Hamid and Azu had knocked on his door in Damascus, it had been four days. 

He only had one potion left.

The thought of drinking it, of the taste of it, made his stomach roil. The body wasn’t meant to do this. The body gave under the influence of too much magic and it craved the simplicity of sleep.

But he couldn’t. Not now.

He couldn’t be weak in front of them.

He owed them more than that.

HIs brain had entered a feedback loop of anxiety that could almost have been mistaken for sleep, if his eyes weren’t wide open, if his shoulders weren’t utterly tense, when Sasha touched his elbow to wake him for his watch.

He didn’t jump. He turned, and looked into the shadow that was Sasha. She didn’t talk, and he got up, glad he wasn’t faced with the keen dark vision of Grizzop or Azu, conscious still that she knew (they all knew) something was very wrong.

He sat on a rock and watched. Watched the mountain. Watched the haze over the crackling field of glass.

When he felt the edges of himself fray even further, he uncorked the potion and downed it.

His stomach rebelled and he retched at the flavour, clamping his hands over his mouth to stop the precious liquid from coming back up before it had its chance to work. 

The energy that coursed through him was lacklustre and left him sick and shaking. He doubled over, breathing through his nose, keeping his mouth tightly closed as his head swam and his heart knocked against his ribs as though it could escape. For a moment he actually thought he would black out - and that sent him into a whole other round of panic - he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from sleeping if he was knocked unconscious first and this whole farce would have been for nothing…

The moment passed, and he caught his breath and straightened, glancing towards the lump of bodies that consisted of the LOLOMG. The sickness faded, leaving him weak but awake, now, able to focus again rather than having his thoughts skitter in every direction.

The heat from the glassed factories was dissipating and the chill air of the mountaintop was beginning to make itself known. Oscar couldn’t help but notice that Grizzop and Hamid had clumped together in the middle of the pile of bodies, Sasha and Azu instinctively moving closer on either side - perhaps an urge to protect? Or just because they were so much bigger and the tiny heat sources that were the goblin and the halfling would be, Oscar imagined, like hot water bottles against the air. Grizzop’s leg was flung over Hamid’s thigh and Oscar could hear soft snores from the halfling, as well as Azu’s deep, measured breathing.

They looked so peaceful. So relaxed. As though the job they were doing wasn’t the culmination of their identity. As though they had something else to live for other than purpose.

_ Why was it so much harder to stop himself from crying? _

He sat.

He watched.

He waited.

There were only a few hours left until dawn.

  
  



End file.
